[K12OSN] server sizing... again

[Sudev Barar]

On 08/05/06, William Fragakis <william at fragakis.com> wrote:
> The server will be in a K-5 environment and used to do a lot of graphics
> intensive applications such as Flash-based web sites, TuxMath, etc. The
> users won't be concurrent. But the performance has to be "snappy". If
> this goes well, big things may come afterwards. So, we want to get it
> right the first time.
>
> Can we go 60 or 80 clients without problems?
>
> Would going to two dual core CPUS help significantly? (Adds about $1000
> to the cost)

KISS: Dual core dual Xeon CPU MoBo wih as much RAM and fastest SCSI's Raid5

That said recently we have tried setting up two servers with dhcpd
load balancing on the same network. Things have been pretty good for
last three days in office environment. Users have started feeling the
difference and no longer chorus of system is soooo slow today is being
heard. Head for LTSP wiki for details.

If the skunk works needs to be positive I would rather go with this
approach and add number of servers based on thumb rule of one server
per 10~20 people supported by a fast scsi raid5 server for NFS mounts
for /home directory. Would further add a subnet of 1000mbps network
for servers to talk to each other.
Builds in a bit of redundancy also allowing for one server to be taken
off for wahetever once in a while without users howling.

--
Sudev Barar
Learning Linux